We are happy to end our summer slump on this blog with the presentation of a very unique project which was published on lyrikline.org today. From January to April 2012, poets from all 27 countries of the European Union and the accession country Croatia wrote a chain poem or, as we call it, Renshi to Europe, for the Berlin Poetry Festival.

In renshi.eu, the last line of each poem became the first of the next, thus connecting each poet to his/her predecessor. There were five groups with six to seven poets in each, creating five side-by-side chain poems by authors with 23 different native languages. Find all texts and translations as well as the audio recording on lyrikline.org

Greece, as both the focus of the economic crisis and the birthplace of European culture and democracy, was the jumping off point for this Renshi. The Greek poet Yannis Stiggas’s poem was used as the starting point and basis for all five groups. At the end, he also wrote a final verse that reflected on the extant traces of his own lines in the writing of the other authors.